Pat Howard: 'Mayor of Millcreek' served township well

Sunday

I remember Paul Martin as fondly as any public figure I've covered in my 35 years in this business.

I remember standing in front of Millcreek Supervisor Paul Martin's desk when I was a young reporter and joking that I was learning to read the papers on it upside down.

He laughed and offered me his chair, and invited me to rifle through his desk at will even when he wasn't around. I think he meant it, though I never tested the hunch.

There was never really the need in my experience. Martin would answer whatever you asked him forthrightly, even when it wasn't to his advantage.

He was two decades into his 30-year run as the "mayor of Millcreek" when I started poking into the public's business there fresh out of college. He seemed intent on showing me the ropes from his perspective, and frankly I could use all the counsel I could get in those days. He was a natural politician in his affable, folksy way, but I never felt like I was being played.

Martin had been a farmer and milkman before being elected in 1963. He was just one of three co-equal supervisors all of those years, but by the time I entered the picture he had long since become the face and leading voice of Millcreek's boom.

He would call me now and then after he retired, always touching on his memories of my early days at the late, great afternoon Erie Daily Times as well as his dealings with Ed Palattella, another young reporter who came along several years later.

Ed, who became and remains a better reporter than I ever was, on Friday recalled lighting into Martin for playing favorites with a veteran reporter for the rival Morning News. Martin appreciated that kind of spunk, and it stuck with him.

Palattella and I talked about those days amid the news that Martin had died Wednesday at age 88. It seems fitting that Ed wrote the story noting his passing and legacy.

I hadn't talked to Martin in I have no idea how many years. But I remember him as fondly as any public figure I've covered in my 35 years in this business.

I first reported to the newsroom at a time when the city of Erie and its most populous suburb were heading in sharply divergent directions. The city was 20 years into its long population and financial slide, and Millcreek had developers lining up to goose its tax base.

Those times were marked by outsized political personalities on each side of the city limits. Martin's tenure in Millcreek roughly overlapped that of six-term Erie Mayor Lou Tullio.

Things were getting tough for the city by then, and Tullio could get irascible about the currents buffeting his town, especially when juxtaposed against the rising tide next door. And Martin was known to good-naturedly crow about the stronger hand he and his colleagues had to play.

Millcreek was still semi-rural when he first took office, shortly after the city reached the high point in its population. But that was about to change in a big way, to a considerable degree at the city's expense.

I remember Martin one day taking me on a tour of Millcreek from his point of view. It included a drive by of what he said was the last working farm in the township.

I didn't always agree with how Martin went about the public's business. He got involved, for example, in some distasteful political mischief when he served on the Erie City Water Authority board after leaving office. But even then I didn't doubt that he was doing what he thought was needed by his lights.

The boom that Martin and his fellow supervisors oversaw has largely run its course. Millcreek is mostly built out now and can no longer count on its tax base expanding fast enough to cover its bills.

And today's supervisors are experiencing the early twinges of how Tullio felt. A third-party assessment of Millcreek's finances earlier this year projected multimillion-dollar deficits ahead.

As evidenced by the Embrace Millcreek draft comprehensive plan, the township also faces the consequences of past mistakes rooted in different times and the velocity of its growth. Among them are chronic stormwater issues and dated, generic commercial corridors that were designed, like so much of American suburbia, primarily in the interest of efficiently moving and parking automobiles.

That's no rap on Martin. He was a leader for his times running a playbook in place in communities nationwide.

I'll remember him for the dedication and verve with which he served Millcreek. Township residents of a certain age will remember, I'm sure, how hard he worked for them all of those years.

Pat Howard can be reached at 870-1721. Send email to pat.howard@timesnews.com. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/ETNhoward.

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